Friday, April 29, 2011

We are living in hard times. And, to be honest, I'm not quite sure how to handle the cuts being imposed upon us to slash our country's deficit.

I've heard many arguments as to whether the cuts are actually necessary or not, and I'm just grateful still to be in a job whilst others have - very sadly - found themselves out of the door.

And the big problem is this: Gideon "George" Osborne.

He's a millionaire product of a very expensive education, and, frankly, he's got that sort of face you can never tire of punching. That's no political bias, by the way, he's just got that sort of face you can never tire of punching.

He could be announcing the closure of every single primary school in the country and forcing 5-11 year-olds to labour down the mines "as a vital grounding in the world of voluntary work", and he'd still have that smirk on his face that you can never tire of punching.

This being the case, I propose a new law. And the new law is this: When announcing budget cuts for the good of the nation's finances, with a smirk on his face that you can never tire of punching, the Chancellor MUST finish his statement with the words: "By Grabthar's hammer - What a savings".

Then we'd know he's sincere, and not secretly laughing up his sleeve at us.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Since I stopped taking the pills for me nerves, I like to think that I am a pretty calm individual, no longer taken with dark thoughts of hacking colleagues to pieces and burying them in the car park just because they muscled in front of you in the staff kitchen and used up all the water in the kettle. Yes, this is a heinous crime, but hardly worth painful death. Not for the first offence, at least.

So, during one my regular Thursday Nutters Club meeting at a local church hall, the casual observer may have been surprised to see your author shouting like a maniac at a leaflet he had found amongst the religious literature you tend to find in these places, a source of endless material for deity-curious atheists and acolytes of The Holy Church of Don't Be A Dick.

And the message of the leaftlet which had provoked my ire was this: "If you need anything, pray to our man Jehovah, and if he deems you pious enough, he will provide".

So, we get this sort of turd-spurt:

"I needed a job, prayed, and God provided me with a part-time post at a supermarket. Nice one, Lord, I no longer have to drink my own urine."

No... I'll think you'll find supermarkets take on anybody who applies as long as they have approximately the correct number of arms and legs. Unless, of course, the Invisible Sky Zombie is head of recruiting at Sainsbury's.

"I was carrying a cross across Wales, but ran out of water. I prayed, and somebody gave me water. Praise Jehovah, I no longer have to drink my own urine!"

Wait... WHAT? You were doing WHAT?

"We were looking for a house, prayed, went to an estate agent and found a house. Our piss-drinking days are over, all thanks to Jehovah!"

And I always thought estate agents were in the service of Satan (who, if God created the entire universe and everything in it, was created by ...err... God)

"I bought an oil lamp as a holiday souvenir when I visited the Holy Land. Recently, we had a power cut that had me praying and drinking my own urine, before I realised that God had provided me with a Lamp. Thanks, God!"

Shut up. Just SHUT UP.

And a large number of testimonies that read along the lines of: "I run a Christian organisation that relies on people giving us money. Sometimes people give us money, usually just as we are running out and drinking our own urine. Thanks, God!"

Normally, I'd say that this kind of harmless religion keeps these people off the streets. But no. These people are ON the streets, carrying crosses around Wales and making otherwise innocent estate agents doubt their sanity.

And, to be perfectly frank, it's asshattery like this that forces me to mock religion, and mock it hard. And to prove my point, I haven't prayed at all today, yet I have found a bottle of whisky on the bus. At least I think it's a bottle of whisky. Who's joining me for a snifter?

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

It started as a harmless bit of channel surfing to see what all the fuss was about with all these celebrity reality programmes. Giving The Only Way Is Essex the short shrift that it deserves, I find myself completely addicted to the car-crash television that is Kerry Katona: The Next Chapter. I have no doubt that Kerry's actually quite pleasant when not being followed by cameras. But we will never know.

And it being Chip Shop Kerry, the only way that you can sensibly watch this televisual feast is to get yourself completely arseholed.

So, here are the official, not-endorsed by Kerry Katona in any way, rules of the Kerry Katona Drinking Game

1. Watch Kerry Katona: the Next Chapter (ITV2 9pm, repeated forever)

2. Take a drink every time...

- Long shot of her enormous lake-side home in Surrey

- Kerry bursts into tears for no reason whatsoever

- Filmed reading her own press in the gossip mags, and bursts into tears

Friday, April 22, 2011

What, they asked on the radio, do you own that belonged to your grandparents?

Answer: Apart from 25 per cent of my genes, I have very little passed down from two generations.

Then, I remembered his old Boy Scout penknife (and he once told me of the time he met Baden-Powell), and in a rare moment of sentimentaility, I wrote it down as a poem.

A pome what I wrote about my poor, dead grandfather

Discovered my grandad's old pen-knifeIn the biscuit tin under my bed;Pleasing, heavy in my hand,The blade still keen like it was new;Eighty years old, and he's long gone,And the only part of him I possess.

And from my grandfather on my mother's side: The ability to build pretty much unsinkable Royal Navy battle ships. (Ability as yet untested).

Thursday, April 21, 2011

After a few months away while I found myself on pills for me nerves as a result of non-stop meetings, I am suddenly once more emerged in agendas, minutes and the painful, screaming deaths of my former colleagues.

On the bright side, their deaths are not in vain, providing - as they do - much chortlesome material for these pages.

So, after a mere fifteen minutes we reach the end of the agenda, and hopes are raised that we can get out of the meeting room before the canteen closes for its lunch break. Then, the dread words: "Any Questions?"

An hour later, the will to live is well and truly lost, and a shopping list is drawn up containing the words "shovel", "tin bath" and "two hundredweight of quicklime".

It is not the questions one minds if they are actually relevant, but they are not. They are simply questions posed by people who cannot stop asking questions, redolent of trying to watch a football match with a small child:

"Dad - Has anyone ever kicked a football and it's hit a pigeon?"

"Yes."

"Dad - Has anyone ever kicked a football and it's hit a man in the crowd?"

"YES"

"Dad - Has anyone ever kicked a football and it's hit a dog?"

"YES"

"Dad - Has anyone ever kicked a football…"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

And then: "And we'll all meet again at nine-thirty tomorrow morning and start with a short team-building exercise."

That's a spanker of an idea, but not enough. What they really need to do is bring back the old-style starts, where somebody fires the starting gun, the drivers have to leg it to their cars, start up, and drive away.

This means that particularly slow and/or fat drivers run the risk of getting run over, which would make F1 both better, and give more opportunities for up-and-coming drivers as they scrape Michael Schumacher off the track.

Still not good enough, and I propose that the mandarins at the FIA take a page from the School Sports Day book: Make the run to the cars an obstacle course.

1. Crawl under a net2. Egg-and-spoon3. Get dressed into overalls, welly boots and big floppy hat4. Three-legged race with their mum

And then, once they reach their cars, the keys are all in a big bowl, like a swinger's party. One set of keys is for a clown car.

Once that's all done, there's the handicap system: Winner of the previous race has to drive a bright pink Nissan Micra. Not just for the next race, but he also has to drive it to the next racing circuit.

And to keep things on edge, one car is fitted - at random, in secret, and in the middle of the night - with an ejector seat. Bet on the right car and the lap number - win a Proton!

Brilliant, I'm sure you will agree. But I'm certain they'll find a way of keeping F1 boring.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Congratulations on being the world's number one exiled religious leader! As exiled religious leaders go, you're right up there with the best and you totally deserve the right to party HARD with Bono and the lads.

However, as a representative of the sprawling global Scaryduck Corporation, which boasts offices on all twenty-seven known continents, we note, with some concern, your recent use of the phrase "Not Daily, Not a Llama" in your official Dalai Lama™ merchandise.

We view this as a blatant attack on our own "Not Scary, Not a Duck" phrase, which we have used under copyright since the year 2002.

Knock it off, slap-head.

Especially the Lil' Lama™ stuff, which is not going to improve anybody's Karma™.

We expect a full and frank apology in your opportunist propaganda sheet of a newspaper: The Daily Lama.

Boomshanka.

Albert O'Balsam

PS Don't try your Jedi mind-tricks, they don't work on Cockneys

Dear Duck Bloke

Peace and eternal blessings upon you!

I note with interest your complaint about my use of the phrase "Not Daily, Not a Llama", which you maintain is a copyright infringement of your own tagline.

You might like to know that I first used the "Not Daily, Not a Llama" AND the more grammatically correct "Neither Daily, Nor a Llama" during my first incarnation in 1391.

Our own records show that you were existing at that time as a mongoose, having spent much of your previous life shatting through people's letterboxes.

That, I believe is a pretty emphatic first dibs.

In the circumstances, and after consulting with our New York-based lawyers, we think the best advice we can give you is this: "GET TO FUCK".

Be lucky

Your pal,

The Dalai Lama™Not Daily, Not a Llama™

PS I have enclosed directions, should you need them

If you're going to get yourself an arch-nemesis, you might as well start at the very top.

Saturday, April 09, 2011

There are sports bloopers and there are Colemanballs (no relation), but nothing compares to the child-like innocence of Sky's Chris Kamara as he misses a key moment in a Premier League football match. Sublime.

Despite the pneumatic delights of a number of the animated cast which are a welcome addition to any household's evening entertainment, I draw your attention to the kind of FILTH that is bringing this nation to its knees.

Can you see what it is? CAN YOU?

That's right, you filthy curs - the follically-challenged Cara Confused is pulling a massive bunch of flowers out of her lady garden. HER LADY GARDEN.

A lady garden, which even taking the artistic licence offered by the cartoonist's art into account, must have the internal dimensions of the TARDIS.

In a subsequent advertisement, Miss Confused is seen pushing a full-sized laptop computer into the same orifice.

What else has she got up there? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? The Pipes and Drums of the Massed Band of the Scots Guards? The Go Compare man?

I do not want to know.

STOP IT, YOU PERVERTS.

Also: Any chance of a discount?

Your pal

Albert O'Balsam

And once that's sorted out: The scourge of regional accents onchildren's television and WHY THEY ARE A BLASPHEMY

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Another day, another hideous toilet-related accident, and another enraged letter to a confused customer relations department.

Will this madness ever end?

Dear Mr T-Box

Congratulations on rebranding yourself after that nasty A-Team business. I'm so glad you were cleared of the crime you didn't commit, but that's by-the-by if my experience with one of your products isn't addressed forthwith.

I refer, of course, to your workplace toilet paper dispenser that goes under the name "Rottweiler". You know - the big round thing in which the paper is (supposedly)dispensed through two rows of jagged teeth.

I say "supposedly" because after my depositing a dose of nutty slack in the gentlemen's facilities in my workplace, I found that despite holding a near full roll of paper, the end of said roll had disappeared inside the machinery and could not be reached. No amount of rotating this way and that would give me the end of the paper, so in desperation, I reached inside the contraption, resulting - predictably - in getting my left hand trapped inside. Because that's the kind of thing that happens to me.

After several minutes fruitless tugging, I realised my hand was trapped, and it was some time before my cries for help were answered, having taken the liberty of availing myself of the little-used Executive Washrooms on the second floor.

After several members of cleaning staff came and pointed at me in my predicament - in which I was in a state of distressed deshabille, my hole beginning to itch in the only way it can when left with unwiped waste products for too long - it was decided that the Fire Service should be summoned.

Unfortunately, they had fires to put out, so rescue came some time later. When the firefighters finally arrived, pointing at my johnson - which, by now, resembled the nozzle on a deflated air-bed - they completely dismantled the cubicle and the toilet before some bright spark pointed out that it was my hand that was stuck.

Happily, a few hefty blows with a fireman's big, red chopper freed me from my prison, and I was able to go about my business with only minor humiliation. Luckily, I was able to stave off the effects of dehydration by drinking from the toilet bowl. I shudder to think of the outcome if it were not for this vital source of life-sustaining water.

And my complaint is this: Sort the paper out, you muppets - I've lost count of the number of times my finger's gone through, leaving me with an unwanted chocolate surprise. I don't care how you do it. Get the Andrex puppy, the Charmin bear and that little bastard from the Velvet adverts in for questioning and sort something out.

"I'm everybody, but I'm not talking about it. However, I am intrigued."

"You know the Weymouth Relief Road?"

Yes, yes I am aware of the new road, and I have driven the length of it several times since it opened to the public several weeks ago.

"When you come over the hill and see the town for the first time, everybody says it looks EXACTLY like a kangaroo."

"EXACTLY like a kangaroo?"

"EXACTLY."

I give her the chinny reckon, but vow to pull over and take a photo if there is indeed a giant kangaroo in south Dorset.

HOLY CRAP

"What's that Skippy? They're charging £55 to see the Olympic sailing? In a public park? The first time that an Olympic committee has ever tried to sell tickets to the sailing, which is, traditionally, not a spectator event? And you want us to stop them? LET'S GET DOWN THERE."

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